


I Live Now On Borrowed Time

by chaos_is_welcome



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Coping, F/M, Lucifer Bingo (Lucifer TV), One Shot, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 07:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20524328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaos_is_welcome/pseuds/chaos_is_welcome
Summary: In which Lucifer finds a relatively healthy way to cope with certain issues, namely the Detective's mortality._______________This is an afterwards, of sorts, to Between the Devil And The Deep Blue Sea.  It also works as a stand alone and is a submission for the Lucifer Bingo Prompt: Occupational Hazards.T/W: Mention of assault, just in case.





	I Live Now On Borrowed Time

When the Detective became a police officer, she had to have understood the hazards inherent to her occupation. Her father had, after all, been killed while in uniform, and she had been instrumental in connecting his murder to a criminal he was investigating. (It says a great deal about her cunning mind that she solved that case, when others had considered it closed with an innocent man serving a life sentence, he thinks proudly.). When Lucifer is feeling introspective about her mortality, he takes the time to trace each and every mark of that occupational hazard, and remember that each marks a moment that things could have gone the other way--a moment he could have lost her.

Tonight is one of those nights. Tonight, he's off balance because their latest case involves a victim that is strikingly similar to Chloe. Same blonde hair, and soft blue eyes. Worse, he's met the unfortunate woman once before. Years ago, his mother had hired three women to impersonate the detective and seduce him. Elizabeth Reynolds had been one of those three women. She was a prostitute, and it had taken him hours to place the face he recognized from the DMV photo. There’d been no recognizing her face on her body. She’d been bludgeoned to death with something large and heavy that Ms. Lopez was still trying to identify. As if that all wasn’t enough, Ms. Lopez had looked at them grimly as she told them the woman showed signs of sexual assault. Even now, Lucifer feels the swing in his gut that he understands is disgust with the depravity of humanity. 

He remembers when Ms. Reynolds and the other two women had surrounded him at the bar and how they instantly had felt familiar to him. Even in his introspection in the disaster that was his life after the Detective had nearly died after being poisoned by the suicidal Dr. Carlisle, he had felt a visceral reaction to the three women in a time when few turned his head. He had sent them on their way as soon as he had intuited his mum's plan. The memory was crystal clear, as all of his were, but insignificant to him beyond the connection to the Detective. That was, until tonight. 

It was still entirely too close to the last time, the worst time, when he had spent five hours in a waiting room, helpless and unmoored as had waited for the doctors to come give them news of whether she (and by extension he) would live or die. He remembered all too well what it felt like to think that he may never see her, hold her, love her again. Once he connected the bloody corpse on the floor to the Detective, Ms. Reynolds' form and Chloe's frequently shifted places. In his mind, he could see his love on the floor, blood matted in her hair, most of her face missing. Even the specter of the image is enough to bring him to his knees. 

He's convinced her to leave the files at home tonight. He made her dinner and plied her with a perfectly paired wine. The urchin is with Daniel. So he undresses her slowly, careful not to touch her until she's naked and shivering with want. And then he begins what has become a ritual to ground himself in the now, with her, instead of thinking of all the ways she can be taken from him. He goes in chronological order and fills the space in between with the moments he has been graced with since. Only the Detective, it seems, can bestow grace in the Devil.

He begins with the scar Jimmy is responsible for on her left shoulder, the one that started it all. He circles it with gentle fingers, then kisses her there. 

He next travels, first fingers and then lips, across her collar bone.

_ She sits next to him after Father Frank's murder. "I'm here for you, Lucifer." _

His hands detour to caress over her heart, scars unseen from when Malcom kidnapped the spawn. His lips trail along behind.

_ She hugs him after the arrest Perry Smith. _

Up, up, along her neck, to her jaw line, to the tiny scar at her hairline left over from her car accident.

_ She sits on the stand in the trial of her father's murder and says he's the best partner she's ever had. _

_ She kisses him on the beach. _

He kisses lower still, circling the tiny pockmark on her stomach where Carlise injected her.

_ He'd held her hand after, and it had been both enough and not, so he had tried to let her go. But he was the tide to her moon, and he couldn't resist her pull. _

Back up to a spot above her heart, unmarred thanks to a bullet proof vest, where Cain could have ended her life if she hadn't thought ahead.

_ He could finally be honest with her, talk about the things that mattered without the veil of the metaphorical. _

To her stomach and the small scar left over from the wound that had brought him back from hell. He would have lost her then, had he not healed her with his feathers.

_ She'd missed him and waited for him, and miracle of miracles, she loved him as recklessly and completely as she loved her. They shared a bed, shared a house, loved each other. _

Then finally to the long scar that runs along her sternum, marking the place the doctors had cracked open her chest. She had been bleeding internally after being in an explosion while pursuing a bomber. He had been back in hell when it had happened, and it could have gone either way. It was pure luck or perhaps the Detective's sheer stubbornness that had kept her alive and he is forever grateful. He had only left her one more time since then, to speak with his siblings, brokering a deal for their help in Hell for the remainder of her mortal life. It wasn't something he liked to think of, because thinking of the deal made him remember that her life was fragile and unbearably short, and he couldn't imagine existing without her there. 

She finally touches him, framing his face with her hands as he finishes tracing the long scar with his tongue, nestled between her breasts. She's breathing heavily and is flushed in all the right places, and he loves her beyond all reason for the understanding and love shining back in her eyes. 

"I'm here, Lucifer," she whispers, and guides him up to meet her mouth. He slides effortlessly home along the way, and she lets out a soft, breathy moan as he kisses her. 

His strokes are long and deep, and their hands never leave each other's skin. She's here and alive and joined to him in body as she is joined to him in soul. Her fingers dancing across his back chase away the spector of Ms. Reynolds, reminding him far too much of the Detective. 

Her job is a part of who she is, and he is endlessly reminded of the occupational hazard that goes with the badge. She lays her life on the line daily. But here, now, she is safe. Every moment she is with him is a gift, borrowed time in an eternity of isolation. He calls her name as she tightens around him, and he follows her as she tumbles over the edge. With her, the fall is glorious and warm and heady, so worth the eons of despair. He nuzzles into her neck, whispers his love, and puts his hand over the steady thrum of her heart.

\-------

WE LIVE ON BORROWED TIME

By Barry Manilow

_I never thought there could be a love like yours and mine_  
_I never dreamed that I would see the day that I would find_  
_A love that feels so right, but here we are tonight_  
_And now the only thing we really need is time_

_We live on borrowed time_  
_No one can be sure when the loan will finally come due_  
_But I'm loving all of mine, I know what time is for,_  
_I've borrowed it so I can spend it all right here with you_

_There was a time when I believed that life held guarantees_  
_There was a time when I was sure my future was secure,_  
_But life had other plans, the future's in God's hands_  
_And knowing that just makes me love you even more_

_We live on borrowed time_  
_Yesterday is past, tomorrow seems a million miles away_  
_But I promise you that I'm gonna make love last_  
_By living every moment, every hour, every day_

_Now we may have a year, or we may have a lifetime,_  
_No one can be certain what the future will allow,_  
_But you and I are here, and this time is the right time_  
_'Cause one thing that I know is that we have each other now, and now,_

_And we live on borrowed time_  
_Let's celebrate and sing as we walk bravely into the unknown_  
_'Cause we're gonna be just fine, whatever life may bring,_  
_We'll face it all together and we'll never be alone_  
_We'll face it all together and we'll never be alone_


End file.
